Saltbox Pocket Card

Becky recently posted the cutest little pocket card using the latest Saltbox Studio line. You can see her card here. It inspired me to create my own. I recently bought some patterned paper at my LSS on a mission to find paper specifically for the latest Saltbox Studio release. I found some gorgeous papers by Graphic 45 called the Baby 2 Bride Collection. I paired some of this patterned paper with Groovy Guava cardstock from Stampin Up to create this cute little pocket card. The sentiment is one by A Muse, while the cute little ballerina mouse is from the Mama Mouse & More set from Saltbox.

VMAA #2

I finally had a chance to get pics (although bad ones) of the cards I created during VMAA#2. I will retake pictures of these later and upload them into my Splitcoast gallery so they can be more easily found. I had so much fun participating in VMAA#2! This was my first time participating and it was great to be able to do this amongst my A Muse friends and cohorts and online with Heather's webcam!

Here's my card for the 'No Embellishments' challenge:


There is something new in this picture. Can you see it?

Here's my card for the 'Messy Glitter' challenge:




Here's my card for the 'Sketch' challenge:



Here's my card for Linda's bonus challenge. I normally would put a BBQ image with this but I was at the store and did not have a BBQ stamp with me so substituted it with a picnic bench.



Lastly, here's my 'B&W' challenge. This one stumped me awfully. This isn't even the original card I made. I had to go home and rip it apart. I used the same focal image, just layered it onto white instead of black and remove a layer of paper inbetween. I would have preferred to use the 'you're my inspiration' sentiment but I don't have one of those!



And then, because, that stinkin B&W challenge threw me so badly, I had to come up with another B&W card that I thought was cute and could be colored in if I wanted to so here's my 2nd card:



I hope you can all participate at the next VMAA, whenever it will be!

New Store!

I had the pleasure of meeting two fabulous people at CHA in April. They are Michelle White and Helle Greer . You might recognize Michelle as one of the A Muse instructors, located in San Diego and Helle as the Grand Prize winner of Amuseapalooza last year. They are also the best of friends and a whole lot of fun! I am so excited for them, too, because they are opening their very own store!!!! That's right....Paper Tales is opening on May 1.





All you lucky stampers and scrappers out in the San Diego area need to make your way to this awesome new store. You also need to mark your calendars for May 31, which is the scheduled date for the store's Grand Opening celebration. Linda, herself, will be there. I wish Michelle and Helle the very best in this new adventure and know it will be a fabulous success. They are such fun women, how could you not have fun in their store?!

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Now I'm also gearing up to participate in VMAA #2, taking place tomorrow night. You should make sure to participate if you can! I'll be down at the A Muse shop with some fellow A Muse buddies (Linda, Heather, Melissa) and I think there might be a few A Muse addicts there as well. It's gonna be a night of great fun!

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I was going to share a card with you today but it looks like that feature is currently broken. I'll try to add one later today, if it lets me.

Ramblings

Just a quick post today. I have a busy week ahead. Both my mom and sister are travelling this week so I am the airport taxi. We have a full week of baseball games and practices, too. Thank goodness the snow (we got 5"!) melted off before my oldest son's game yesterday. The sun actually came out and it turned out to be a great day to play baseball.


When the April A Muse release came out, I was looking at the 'rain' stamp trying to see something new in it. Well, I came up with this.....watermelon seeds! So, I leave you with this fun watermelon card.


I made this card using the red kitchen notecard along with a strip of the green kitchen notecard that I scalloped using a small corner rounder. It needed something to separate it from the red so I put a thin strip of black behind it. To make the watermelon, I use circle punches and then cut part of them off to look like a watermelon slice. I can't remember, but I think I used a 1 1/4" punch for the red and then 1 1/2" punch for the green. I stamped the 'rain' using black ink, onto the red portion of the circle to make my watermelon seeds. I threw the rest of it together and out popped this fun card.

Sometimes I surprise myself when I manage to think 'out of the box.'

Oh, one more thing....be sure to be ready for VMAA #2 this Saturday. What's VMAA you say? Well, it's a Virtual Meeting of the AMuse Addicts. A Muse Addicts? Yup, there's a whole website dedicated to A Muse Addicts! You can find it here. VMAA #2 takes place this Saturday from 8-10pm Central. Here's some info I cut and pasted from the A Muse Addicts website:

• Here are the rules for the night:* VMAA starts at 8pm CST.
• There will be four challenges, each lasting 30 minutes.
• Each challenge will be posted in a separate thread in this VMAA section.
• You are to complete the challenge in 30 minutes (30 minutes from the time you start). Uploading may be done at a different time (i.e not part of your 30 minute limit).
• If you can't participate in real time (i.e during the VMAA event), please feel free to play along - JUST time yourself and don't use more than 30 minutes. We are using the honor system here!
• Link to your creation on the challenge that you are participating by 8pm CST Sunday April 27th.
• We will pick winners at RANDOM from all that post their links to the challenge thread... i.e. FOUR winners!
• HAVE FUN and don't stress.

Sound like fun? Come join us! I'll be participating this time, too. You can find more info on the A Muse Addicts website under the Challenges/Contests section where there is a subheading titled VMAA.

Erin K

I have a new cyber friend that has joined my SCS CPD buddies. She's Erin K. She cracks me up. Every day. I mean the girl is absolutely hilarious and I wish I could hang out with her. Well, today Erin's blog has a very special post. She worked with Gina K to create a stamp set to cover difficult times when a 'get well' or 'thinking of you' doesn't quite cut it. I don't usually pimp non-A Muse related companies but in this case I am pimping my friend, Erin K. Go here for her blog post. She's even giving one of these beauties away. Erin, what an incredible experience for you and I'm so proud of you!

Stampin Up stuff for sale

I'm narrowing my stash of stuff I no longer use and have listed some Stampin Up stuff for sale over on SCS. I've added a link to the right column of this blog (under my class schedule) and also if you click here. I have some Paper Salon Tailored Tins and one Memory Box Fun At The Beach Tin listed here. As I clean out my craft room, I'll be sure to leave you some more links. I have some House Mouse stuff, Penny Black stamps, and other miscellaneous items that have to go.




Today I am sharing another Saltbox Studio card. I wanted to keep things clean and simple. I love the Blueberry Kitchen notecards. They are a nice change from girly colors sometimes. Now I don't know much about birds but normally I would color this one red to make it a Cardinal. I decided he could be a Blue Jay. I see them sometimes on my fence in the Spring. I don't think they have a light blue belly but this one does! LOL. I used the Tweets and Tweet Companion sets from The Saltbox Studio. You can purchase these awesome clear stamps here. One really cool thing Beth (from SBS) has done is that she's provided a picture of the images in the clear set alongside the same picture colored in. It just gives you an idea of what the images will look like. Of course, how yours looks depends on the coloring medium you choose, along with your color palette. And if you go to her blog she is currently offering a watercoloring tutorial.

More Saltbox Studio

I really have been having lots of fun with the new Saltbox Studio line. I love that they can be easily combined with the 'old' sets. Here I used the 'old' fences set with the new 'Tweets' and 'Tweet Houses.'

I've updated my class schedule off to the right. I have some Clearly A Mused classes taking place next week. We'll be using a combination of clear and wood mounted stamps to create some fun cards. If you're interested in taking a class, please contact the store directly.

First New Release post

I just couldn't wait until tomorrow to share my first card with you! I love this Farmer Hare even more than I thought I would. He's just so stinkin cute!

Card deets: A Muse Kitchen Green 4-bar notecard, orange dot PLP, orange sheer ribbon; French Roast notecard to layer colored image on, orange crush notecard for sentiment/circle. Image & sentiment by The Saltbox Studio-Farmer Hare

Saltbox Studio

Well, I am the proud owner of all the new releases at The Saltbox Studio. I have to say, this is a fabulous release! The birds, birdhouses, Mama Mouse, every single set is totally adorable. I will be playing with these A LOT! You can get yours here. I would love to see some samples when you get a chance to make them. I will post some here, too.

Big shout out to a couple of my peeps. Big, big thanks to Mona. She is one of my students. I helped her a bit with some wedding invitations. She is using the Elzys. Well, she made me a beautiful cottage-y shelf as a thank you. I can see my Primas sitting on this thing quite nicely. I need to take a pic so I can show you. Another shout out to Doris. She sent me a RAK, which was truly a RAK as it was unexpected. So lovely and I so appreciate her taking the time to send me a little sunshine. I'll take a pic of it and post it, too. Probably tomorrow. Work should be slow.

Now go shopping and get yourself some Saltbox sets! I promise, you won't be sorry!!!

Shrinky Dink Tutorial

I learned about this fabulous little Shrinky Dink trick from one of the stores I teach at and wanted to share it with all of you. I apologize for a few blurry pictures but I am too lazy to retake them. LOL. Do you ever find yourself wondering if an stamped image as a Shrinky Dink would shrink down to the 'right' size for your project? Well, here's how you'll know!

Step 1: cut yourself a strip of Shrinky Dink plastic to your desired length. I figure I'm never going to shrink something bigger than this 8" ruler so I cut an 8" x 1.5" piece of Shrinky Dink plastic. I sanded it in a cross hatch direction, per the instructions. Then, I took my ruler and marked lines at every half inch and full inch as seen in the photo above.

Step 2: Using your heat gun, shrink up your 'ruler.' Take care to shrink it evenly, moving your gun from left to right, for even shrinkage. It will crinkle up on you in the process. If it gets too crinkled, straighten it out a bit and finish shrinking it up. Mine kind of crumpled into itself near the center so halfway through, I sort of straightened it quickly, then took the heat gun back to it. Right after you're done, use a wood block or some other flat object to flatten your ruler out. It might not be perfectly straight but that's okay.

Here's a picture of my completed, shrunked ruler.

Step 3: Stamp your image onto another piece of Shrinky Dink plastic. I used Staz-On. Color the image in with colored pencil. Cut your image out. If you want to make a hole to thread ribbon or something through, now's the time to do it. Use a hole punch to make a hole. I would recommend using the size that makes holes in notebook paper. Remember, it's going to shrink to a tiny hole. You need it big enough to thread something through. Here's a picture of my stamped, colored Shrinky Dink image, before being heated, and measured against my real life sized ruler.

Now you want to heat your image to shrink it down. Here's a picture of my Shrinky Dink'ed image against my Shrinky Dink ruler. You'll see that in the picture above, the image before shrinking measured about 1 3/4". On the Shrinky Dink'ed ruler, it measure the same!

Isn't that cool?! Nifty trick, I say! Now I want all y'all to go make a Shrinky Dink'd card and share your link here. You can do that by leaving a comment with a link to your card on an online gallery somewhere.

Now I'll also leave you with a new Shrinky Dink'd card I made using the A Muse Party Time and Coffee Break clear sets with an Elzybells image.

All supplies, except the Shrinky Dink plastic, from A Muse Artstamps, Inc

Rough Week

Oh boy. It's been a rough week. Emotionally rough week and add to that, I've been fighting a cold which I think is going into bronchitis. I've had headaches throughout the day from sinus pressure, too. Just feeling blah. My son comes back from camp today, though, so I'm really happy about that.


If you have been a reader of my blog for a while, you might recall me mentioning my Aunt Lyn. She had a double aneurism in mid-December. Well, her sister, Pat, had herself checked out and the doctors found a clot in her, too. She had surgery to remove it but has been fighting illness off and on since then and developed pneumonia. She was admitted to the hospital, the infection went septic and she died yesterday. My poor cousin is crushed. Her mom is still working on her recovery but they don't feel she's ready to know about her own sister yet. Pat is not my aunt but I've spent many vacations there that included her in them so I know her well enough to know the world has lost a very dear person.


A dear friend of mine lost her grandmother yesterday, too. Hugs to you, Joyce.


One thing I have been looking forward to, though, are the sneak peeks to the new Saltbox Studio line. Lexi has the most awesome card here, Becky has one here, Elena's is here, and I hope Mary Rose and Kelly have theirs up soon. This release looks awesome!

And because I don't want to leave you empty handed, here's a quick, easy peasy card I made recently. I don't think I've shared this one yet. I colored it with Copics and used a black eyelet for the tire.

I guess I have some 'thinking of you' cards to make today for my friends and family. Hugs out there to anyone that needs them.

They're here!

The new release is out and available here . This release is fabulous because it celebrates the women in our lives. There's a lady golfer, this yoga girl, a runner, a girl scout, a female doctor, a ballerina, etc, etc. You've got to check them out!

I love this yoga girl paired with the Yoga center and the sentiment 'Thanks for being flexible.' One of these days I'd like to take a yoga class. I've tried Pilates and I thought that was fun. I just never stick to anything because in all actuality, I'm just lazy. The only time I really stuck to exercising was when I had friends to work out with and when I hired myself a personal trainer. The former PE teacher at my son's school has gone off to offer physical fitness classes. One of these days I'll get signed up with her. Right now, her class offerings don't fit my schedule but she's great fun and I know I'd enjoy getting a work out from her. She's got lots of spunk.

For now, let your fingers do the walking and head on over to the A Muse site for some new, fun stamps!